HalcyonSpirit
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Hey, perverts!
Improved Tan4 design!
I'd try to make her look more mature for us grown-ups, but there's not much room for a naso-labial crease.
Seriously, though. Yea? Nay?
Yea, but something's bothering me about her forehead. It just seems... HUUUUUUUUUGE. But objectively, I'm not sure it is. Probably not.
But yeah, the sprite gets approval from me.
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Bad week bad week... can't it be next Wednesday? I don't have time...
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I have now voted.
Good job, everyone! I really enjoyed these entries.
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MORE! NEED MORE!!!
Something I just figured I'd point out: what was X's chest plate is now, obviously, the orange part of her upper outfit. However, it seems very small, unlike the drawing (in which is covers the whole area around her neck). I think this is in part due to wanting to represent the gray pretzel in the sprite, but it's taking up too much of the sprite right now, especially in the "ready" stance. Also, the shoulders, it looks like when she's in her "ready" stance her shoulder "spikes" (whatever you want to call them) are partly orange when they should only be gray. Maybe I'm wrong, but I figured it couldn't hurt to point it out. I want this to be as awesome as humanly possible.
(There's other little things as well, like maybe reducing the size of the wrist cuffs in future versions, but I'll let you handle those.)
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I wrote this somewhat on a whim. I had an idea and ran with it. It probably won't be the most interesting read, and quite frankly, I think the whole thing would work better if it was longer. However, I do plan on returning to this setting in future works, ones that are longer and more fleshed out. I've got... ideas.
PatrolFor countless millennia, the human species looked up to the heavens and asked themselves, "what is up there?" From the surface of their world, they could only begin to imagine what lay beyond their sight. Even with the advent of telescopes, humans could only catch a glimpse of the vast universe all around them. Their curiosity never waned as they took to the skies and reached further and further up away from the only home they knew. The universe was at their fingertips, they could feel it. Soon enough, the makings of humanity began spreading out, first into the emptiness around their planet, and then to their immediate celestial neighbor in a single, small step. It wasn't long before their first remote voyage to the edge of their solar system. And then, in an explosion of new technological achievement and adventurous spirit, mankind grasped the fruits of their labor and spread out across their solar system and beyond…
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"Blue Lea… is Delta Tower… respond."
Carth flicked a switch on his control board. The static that was piercing his skull came to an abrupt end. He glanced around his RLF-14's cockpit for any signs of immediate trouble and found, predictably, nothing. He pulled back on the flight stick and hit the thrusters. Outside his cockpit, the metallic dust cloud he had been inside of thinned to the emptiness of space as his spacecraft gracefully responded to his will. He reactivated the communications system he had shut off moments earlier; static no longer assaulted his ears.
"Delta Tower, this is Blue Leader. You rang?"
There was an audible sigh from the other end. "We detected a small explosion in your general vicinity. Did you find anything?"
"That's a big negatory," Carth responded coolly, despite his still-racing heartbeat. "There was a gas pocket in the debris cloud I was investigating, but it isn't there now. The engines must've set it off when I passed through it." He scanned the ship's diagnostics display. "Singed the hull pretty good, but I'm alright."
"Roger that, Blue Leader. I'll inform the sensor crew to try to scan them more thoroughly from now on. Be careful out there; don't need you getting killed right before our transfer back to civilization. Delta Tower out."
Carth opened up the squadron's comm. channel. "Blue Squadron, this is Blue Leader. Let's do a final pass through the sector before heading home." A flurry of affirmatives came almost immediately; they must have been anxiously waiting for the order to come. He didn't blame them.
"Again with the close calls, Commander? Are you trying to get yourself killed?" Carth knew the comment was coming, and lifted the facemask on his helmet so he could rub his eyes.
"Of course, Gav, of course. Gotta weed out the old farts, after all." Both of them knew that the explosion was nowhere near strong enough to damage the fighter, but the banter was the only way to keep things light on a mission. "I'm heading back to your position. Stand by."
As he gripped the flight stick to swing his fighter around, Carth gazed silently out into the nearly empty void of the system's asteroid belt. It would probably be more apt to call it a debris field, he reminded himself. There were many times more scraps of ancient wreckage than asteroids floating around. Their mission today, just like it had been for the previous two months, was to patrol various sectors of the entire solar system for any kind of activity and investigate possible disturbances. It was an easy assignment, as it should be for active-duty pilots on "vacation." The current situation in the outer edges of the galaxy made it impossible for anyone to be allowed time away from service, but rotating whole battle groups in and out of this system for surveillance duty was close enough. Nothing ever happened in the system, so all anyone had to endure was a few hours each day essentially riding on autopilot in their scout fighters and keep an eye out for anything unusual. The monotony was so great that pilots often were eager to get back to the front lines halfway through their allotted time in the system.
Carth was no exception. He preferred peace to war, but everyone knew he would rather be in battle than not during a war that threatened to devastate the galaxy. Already, he was forming the messages he needed to send to various people once he was back to the fleet. The communications blackout everyone was subject to during their stay in the system caused him much anxiety; he needed to be in contact with the military commanders, planning new strategies and fighting the war, not sitting in some backwater, uninhabited solar system. His finger was tapping the flight stick impatiently when his comm. suddenly came back to life.
"Blue Leader, Blue Six. You're taking too long to get over here. Maybe I should go to you and light up your fighter's rear. The extra thrust would be useful. I'm sure you wouldn't mind the risk of sudden decompression." Carth smirked; if anyone else had said what his second-in-command just had, he'd be sure to put them on cleaning duty for a month.
"Right, Six," he replied. "Deep space recon training mission for you when we get back."
"Well then, in that case, the rookies have started a betting pool on how much the 'old man' has lost his touch in just a few months without a single enemy to fight." Carth could imagine the grin on Gav's face as he spoke. "But I'm not supposed to tell you that."
"Are they now? Well, I'll make sure they understand that being in your thirties does not an old man make." The comm. clicked as Gav ended the transmission. "They sure know how to push my buttons." He stretched in his cockpit, waiting for the autopilot to bring him to the next waypoint, where Gav would join him for the remainder of the mission. "Just one more reason for wanting to get out of here."
Carth pulled out his personal datapad and plugged it into the fighter's sensors and navigational databank. The mission was boring, but the subject matter was anything but. His rank in the military was nothing to be scoffed at, and thus most information about his missions would be readily available to him. This assignment, however, was different. All inquiries were met with a single phrase: "Classified information." Not even his contact in the intelligence division had access to any information regarding the assignment. The system was classified at the highest level possible, right down to its name. The only solid information he had was gathered from his own patrols. The data provided to them on their arrival said that the system contained seven planets, four being gaseous, orbiting a middle-aged yellow star, with a single asteroid belt located between the third and fourth planets. Beyond that, the details of the system were a mystery to Carth.
He hated not knowing the details.
And once I get out of this place, I can stop obsessing over it so much, he told himself. Leaving can't come soon enough.
Going over the data collected on his squadron's patrols – obtained from the base databank in a less-than-legitimate manner, of course, since it officially didn't exist – Carth noticed that there was a planet-sized mass orbiting the star between the second and third planets. He could only speculate on what it could be, since all craft were prohibited from getting within twenty-five billion kilometers of the object's orbit, but he guessed that it was a planet that also did not officially exist. Why they wanted to hide an entire planet was beyond him. His mind tried to avoid thinking about it, but his gut told him something critically important to the war effort lay there. It would explain the secrecy and the constant surveillance in the system.
He put his datapad down and willed himself to stop thinking about it. After he left, there would be no reason to keep thinking about it. After he left, he could go back to doing what he did best: fighting in the war. No one knew quite how much he hated it here.
The comm. flared to life just as Gav's fighter pulled alongside his at 1.2 kilometers distance. "Blue Leader, this is Blue Three." One of the rookies. Probably not sure what to do about something. "I found some charred wreckage floating near a group of asteroids just a few minutes ago. I've been looking at it, but it's so banged up I can't ID it. Should I report it in?"
Bingo. "May as well. Let them deal with it. It's probably nothing, but you know how they are about the details." Nearly as anal about them as I am, that's how they are.
"Yeah, they're almost as bad as you are." The man on the other end chuckled. "Three out."
Carth shook his head. "They're definitely pushing my buttons today. Rookies don't get that privilege." He made a mental note to reprimand them back at base.
The rest of the patrol went without incident, and Carth found himself nearly humming with glee as he strode through the hallways of Delta Base. That won't do for a squadron commander still in his flight suit, even among his own squadron. His delight about finally leaving the mystery system behind the very next day was definitely getting the better of him. He reached his quarters and slid the door open. Everything was as he had left it; his suitcase lay on the bed with all his clothes packed away. His personal belongings were in a separate bag at the foot of the bed. He walked inside, closed the door, and collapsed onto the bed. His legs hung off the side, and for a moment he let himself imagine the things he would do as soon as he got back to civilization. More work, but at least it'd be productive.
A sharp rapping on his door pulled him from his thoughts. The door was already open by the time he got to his feet. Standing there with a blank look was Gav.
"No," Carth said in monotone.
Gav looked down at the single sheet of paper in his hand and started reciting its contents. "To the officers and pilots of Blue Squadron: In accordance with standard military procedure concerning deployments and mission secrecy,—"
"No," he repeated. Don't say it.
"—General Fierle has, upon review of the data recovered on day sixty-five of Blue Squadron's deployment, ordered—"
"No," he said again. Don't you say it.
"—that Blue Squadron—"
"No," he emphasized, taking the boot off his left foot in the process. Don't you dare ruin this. Gav put his unoccupied hand on the door and stepped outside the room, not turning his back.
"—remain on duty here at Delta Base until further notice." Carth swung and chucked the boot at Gav's head the moment he stopped speaking. Gav, however, was already protected behind the suddenly closed door before it could reach him.
“Sorry, Carth," he said from behind the door. He opened the door back up slightly. “As they used to say—" He poked his head inside… “don't shoot the messan—”
… and had his face attacked by another flying boot.
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I've got some money coming in for my college expenses pretty soon (such as food and such). I can part with a meal to support this place. After all, listening to the music from here has kept me going when I had no motivation, it was Mahaboo's LRS&S thread in Offtop that helped me through some of my rougher times (a thread that would not exist without OCR in the first place), and I met one of my closer friends here at VT through this place. I'm in a much more favorable situation largely due to this site, directly and indirectly. So as soon as I get that money, I'll contribute what I can. This place deserves it.
I'll let you know when I make the donation.
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Go to the Inbox, check the box on the right at checks all the messages in the Inbox, and then go to the bottom and use the drop-down box to mark them all as Read. That'll get rid of the message (it won't even show up in the message count). And since it's spam, you won't miss it.
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Is Nikki Giovanni someone I should hear about?
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Just something to keep in mind: I have something to submit for this competition. However, work has also caught up with me, so if I were to make a submission right now it'd probably be a rough draft of what I want. I'm going to try to finish it up before the deadline today, but whether that happens or not depends on several college-related factors. So I could use an extension, but it isn't absolutely necessary.
Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, I have signed up for a Creative Writing class here at VT taught by Nikki Giovanni. Am I excited? Yes, yes I am.
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Just as a reminder to everyone, the last day to make a submission for this month's Short Story competition is one week from today, March 28th.
Let's hope we get plenty of submissions! I know I'm almost done with mine.
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Man, based on what you guys are saying... by the time I actually get a Wii, a copy of Brawl, and all the friend codes uploaded, I'll be so behind in skill that I'll get my ass handed to me on a silver platter within a minute of each match.
SWEET!
Can't wait to play you guys, though. -
OMFG... bad RAM again. I already returned one set of bad RAM a month ago. Can't believe this stuff.
Advice: check your power supply. If your power supply isn't consistent with its output, the power fluctuations can damage sensitive hardware. RAM is especially prone to damage due to a bad power supply.
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OK, so let me just make sure I understand. You got the error after upgrading the driver. Then you downgraded it and still got an error. And now you've brought it back up to the most recent driver and it's still giving you an error.
If the above is true... well, hm...
Do me a favor and check the Event Viewer (Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer) to see if there were any errors logged from right around the time it BSoD'd you, specifically in the System and Application sections. That might give a clue if there are.
Second, we can't discount the possibility that, by sheer bad luck, either your motherboard or RAM has gone bad and it did so when you did the update by coincidence. Unlikely, but it's worth investigating. If you can, try starting Windows in Safe Mode and run your programs again, including FL Studio, and use them for a while. If nothing happens, it's likely a driver issue. If something does happen, it's either a system or hardware issue.
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It could be any number of issues. The new driver could be conflicting somehow with a different driver installed on your system. It could be conflicting with the old drivers you uninstalled if they weren't uninstalled properly. It could be that the new driver has a problem with a specific program that it wasn't tested with. It could even be that it's a one-time, random occurrence (with that specific driver).
It's hard to diagnose a problem like this with just one instance to go on (I'm not counting the original BSoD, since that was with a beta driver, and you aren't using it now). Keep track of what you are doing, like the programs you have running, and see if it happens again. If it does, get the information displayed, like the type of error, and if it is displayed, the file that caused the BSoD (sometimes it will display a file name towards the bottom; that is the file that caused the BSoD, though it doesn't necessarily mean that specific file caused the problem). One time means it could be anything. More than one time means there's a problem.
Alternatively, you could try rolling back to the driver you had before (approximately, but you updated for a reason, so I doubt you want to do that), or you can try updating some of the other drivers on your system, such as the sound drivers. That might help.
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In all seriousness, where is this mix? I can't seem to find it. I can find references to it, but not the mix itself.
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That's an nVidia card, right? Have you tried changing the resolutions using the nVidia Control Panel? I have an nVidia card, and sometimes the default Windows display controls won't show the correct resolutions until after I've done it via the nVidia control panel.
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Happy Birthday, oh mischievous one! Playing pranks on Kanthos by taking over his computer... tsk tsk tsk.
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The competition is begun, as of a little over an hour again. Get to work, everyone!
*salute*
Aye aye!
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I've been meaning to post in the Requests forum for someone to do this theme. It's been on my "This needs to be ReMixed NOW" list for a while.
Looks like I can check it off the list now.
Seriously, this is awesome stuff. This theme was beautiful originally, and you've done a fantastic job capturing that wonderful feeling it had and making it your own. I thought it could've used an ending that's a bit longer, but seriously, it's still great as-is. This is going straight into my playlist.
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Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but does anyone else really dislike the positioning of the left analog stick on the Playstation controllers? I know I do; I don't see any reason for having it designed that way. The position of the left analog stick for the Gamecube and Xbox controllers is positioned where your thumb naturally rests, very comfortable, especially since you're using it all the time (I find the Gamecube controller's stick position to be perfect, at least for my hands). The Playstation controllers have it down and to the right, which makes you extend your thumb over there - a rather unnatural and uncomfortable position, I think. For something used as often as it is, I have to wonder why it's placed there.
Maybe one of you people can explain it to me, because I certainly can't figure it out.
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Man, I hate it when these events are scheduled when I'm in the middle of semesters. Or in this case, right towards the end so there's no way I can come because finals are that upcoming week. I really want to go to these things like VGL and MAGfest, but college always gets in the way.
So to answer your question, no, I'm not coming, unfortunately. Driving 800 miles (about 400 both ways) right before finals is a bit much for me.
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Well, if you downloaded the torrents, it would seem that the last mix posted included in the torrent should be this one, #1600. Dirt Devil is #1685, so you have 85 more to download (assuming you want to download all the mixes that were also in the projects (such as VotL)). So, just start here:
http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01601/
and download each mix individually. Just iterate the number at the end from 1601 to 1685 and you'll be good to go.
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Congrats to Darklink42, Imagery and Leon K! Looks like we're all getting a prize this time.
This is the first time I've gotten anything for my writing, even if it is tied with another person's for Runner-Up. I don't mind. At least this is one piece of good news on this stupid day.
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Competitions forum added.
Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!!!
Maybe now that sub-forum won't die a slow, painful death.
... Not to mention maybe getting some more participation in the Writing Competition.
OCR-Tan
in Post Your Art!
Posted
I just looked at the sprite sheet, and from the looks of it, the torso, legs, and closest arm remain unchanged between normal running and running while shooting. For normal running, the head twists left and right as he runs, while when he's shooting, the head remains straight (it's the same head as when he's just standing). And of course, the back arm is shooting, and does not change during the running animation.
Also, something else to consider, CS, is whether you want to put in the extra effort to get 4Tan to shoot with only one arm (in other words, when she's facing one direction she uses the arm "further away" from the screen, but when she's facing the other direction, that arm is still used but is now the closer arm of the two). This is something that is not implemented in the X games, so it'd be some extra effort, spriting and coding, to get it to work.